• In a new ranking from the Anti-Defamation League, only two U.S. universities — Brandeis and Elon — have earned a top grade of “A” for being “Jew-friendly.” With the sole exception of Dartmouth, all Ivy League schools earned al “D” or a failing “F” grade.

• Ten Jewish students have filed a lawsuit against Cooper Union for allegedly failing to protect them and their classmates from antisemitism. The complaint stems from an Oct. 25 incident in which the students were locked in the campus library as pro-Palestinian protesters marched nearby.

• Several university leaders — including at Pomona, Columbia and Vanderbilt — began cracking down in recent weeks on anti-Israel disruptions on campus.

• A former student at Cornell University pleaded guilty to posting threatening statements against Jews on campus shortly after the start of the war in the Middle East this fall. He faces up to five years in Federal prison.

• Demonstrations and arrests spread across some of America’s most influential universities, as administrators have struggled to defuse tensions on campuses over pro-Palestinian protests. Nearly 50 people were arrested at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., on April 22, following the arrests the previous week of more than 100 protesters at Columbia University. The arrests unleashed a wave of activism across other campuses, including M.I.T., the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and others, as protesters sought their universities’ divestment from companies with ties to Israel and a cease-fire in Gaza. Pictured, a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia.                      Getty Images

More than 250 Holocaust survivors have joined an international initiative to share their stories of loss and survival with students around the world. With antisemitism on the rise following the devastating Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the New York-based Claims Conference, which has organized the Speakers’ Bureau, hopes that firsthand accounts of the cruelties endured during the Holocaust will help counter disinformation and denial.                                                                                                                      AP Photo

Rabbi Levi Raskin, director of the JCrafts Center for Jewish Life and Tradition, playfully adds flat discs of dough to  the oven to cook into matzah, as prepared by first graders from Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the  Nation’s Capital, during a “Model Matzah Factory” field trip to the center in Rockville, Md., on Thursday, April 18, 2024. To be kosher for the Passover holiday, the dough has to be prepared and cooked in 17 minutes and not allowed to rise.

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The number of antisemitic incidents more than doubled in 2023, surging after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit, which pointed out that more than half of last year’s incidents took place in the last three months of the year.

The report, published in early April, tabulated 8,873 incidents in 2023, 5,204 of them occurring after Oct. 7. By contrast, the League tallied 3,697 in 2022. Incidents included assaults, vandalism, harassment, and painted swastikas. Ten percent of the incidents in 2022 happened on college campuses.

ADL researchers compiled the data using information from victims, law enforcement, the media and partner organizations.

The co-chair of a task force set up by Harvard University to combat antisemitism has resigned. It is the second high-profile resignation in the university’s efforts to address complaints by Jewish students  that they have felt uncomfortable on campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel. In that attack, scores of citizens were slaughtered and nearly 200 taken as hostages, some of them children and seniors.

The co-chair, Raffaella Sadun, a professor of business administration, did not give a reason for stepping down, but a colleague said she appeared to be frustrated at how long it was taking to make

Hillels of Westchester filed a Title VI complaint Tuesday against Sarah Lawrence College on behalf of Jewish students over “persistent and pervasive” antisemitism.

As a response to the tense climate on campus at Barnard College and Columbia University since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, students at Barnard may no longer display messages on their dorm doors, said an email from Leslie Grinage, the college’s dean.

Some students at Barnard and Columbia University, of which it is a part, have placed signs on their dormitory doors charging Israel with genocide in Gaza and of being an illegitimate state. In response, Jewish students have filed a lawsuit, accusing both schools of failing to protect students from “pervasive” antisemitism and anti-Zionism. “Anti-Zionism is not merely a political movement — although many try to disguise it as such — but is a direct attack against Israel as a Jewish collectivity,” the suit reads.

Barnard officials said the new dorm policy is intended to foster an atmosphere “where everybody feels welcome and safe… While many decorations and fixtures on doors serve as a means of helpful communication amongst peers, we are also aware that some may have the unintended effect of isolating those who have different views and beliefs,” the email statement said.